Since February 2015, “Support to the Development of the Thai Climate Change Policy” Project has been organizing a series of training for its pilot areas, 17 provinces and 32 municipalities, in order to strengthen the capacity of governmental officials in integrating climate change into a planning system. The first two training modules focused on the understanding of the Climate Change Master Plan, area-based priority identification, data analysis, stakeholder analysis, and goal setting.
In November 2015, the Project proceeded with the third training module aiming to support pilot regions to select appropriate approaches for their area – based development planning. The third training was separated into 3 sub-trainings on inter-related topics with more than 100 participants from Regional Environmental Office, Provincial Environmental Office, Municipality and provincial climate change committee.
- Training 3.1: Water management, forestry, natural resources, agriculture, and coastal erosion was held during 4-6 November 2015 at Ambassador Hotel, Bangkok
- Training 3.2: Urban management, waste management, human settlement and security, and transport was held during 16-18 November 2015 at Windsor Suits and Hotel, Bangkok
- Training 3.3: Electricity generation (renewable energy), energy efficiency in building, and industry was held during 30 November – 2 December at Maenam Riverside Hotel, Bangkok
On the first day participants received technical inputs on different approaches and best practices from both national and international experts. Day one was closed with an exercise on how to apply those approaches to participants’ respective areas. On the second day, attention was drawn away from participants’ own area as they were encouraged to think coherently between the needs, baseline, goals, and approaches through a case study. With the assistance of experts, participants have learned how to develop coherent goals and approaches taking into account changing climate conditions. On the last day, participants were, once again, allowed to work on their own case using sector specific technical inputs from day one and planning inputs from day two. Most of the participants were positively surprised on how much they had improve their understanding on climate change, realizing the progress made when comparing the outputs from the first and the last workshop day.